Elizabeth the Queen: Inside the Life of a Modern Monarch

561 Pages·2012·8.62 MB·English

by  Sally Bedell Smith

The Queen leaving the Belgian Embassy in London, 1963. Reginald Davis MBE (London)

Copyright © 2012 by Sally Bedell Smith
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a
division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Sally Bedell.
Elizabeth the Queen : inside the life of a modern monarch / Sally Bedell Smith.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-679-64393-7
1. Elizabeth II, Queen of Great Britain, 1926– 2. Great Britain—History—Elizabeth II, 1952– 3. Queens—
Great Britain—Biography. I. Title.
DA490.S55 2011
941.084092—dc23
[B]
2011023661
Front-jacket photograph: © Yousuf Karsh
Back-jacket photographs: © Hugo Burnand/AFP/Getty Images (top), © Tim Graham/Getty Images (bottom
left), © Central Press/Getty Images (bottom right)
www.atrandom.com
v3.1_r1
From “The Opening of Parliament,”
MARY WILSON,
wife of Harold Wilson,
Prime Minister, 1964–70 and 1974–76
They love her for her wisdom and her pride,
Her friendship and her quiet majesty;
And soon the streets of Britain will be thronged
With crowds rejoicing in her Jubilee
But as the cool unfaltering voice reads on,
A different picture forms upon the air—
A small quick figure, walking all alone
Across a glen studded with standing deer …
She notes a crumbling wall, an open gate,
With countrywoman’s eyes she views the scene;
Yet, walking free upon her own estate
Still, in her solitude, she is the Queen
“She sort of expands when she laughs.
She laughs with her whole face.”
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, in New Brunswick, Canada, during her
Golden Jubilee celebrations, October 2002. Norm Betts/Rex USA
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
PREFACE
ONE A Royal Education
TWO Love Match
THREE Destiny Calls
FOUR “Ready, Girls?”
FIVE Affairs of State
SIX Made for Television
SEVEN New Beginnings
EIGHT Refuge in Routines
NINE Daylight on the Magic
TEN Ring of Silence
ELEVEN “Not Bloody Likely!”
TWELVE Feeling the Love
THIRTEEN Iron Lady and English Rose
FOURTEEN A Very Special Relationship
FIFTEEN Family Fractures
SIXTEEN Annus Horribilis
SEVENTEEN Tragedy and Tradition
EIGHTEEN Love and Grief
NINETEEN Moving Pictures
TWENTY A Soldier at Heart
TWENTY-ONE Long Live the Queen
Photo Insert 1
Photo Insert 2
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SOURCE NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
PREFACE
AT THE END OF THE WEDDING OF PRINCE WILLIAM AND CATHERINE Middleton on
April 29, 2011, the radiant couple turned before walking down the aisle at
Westminster Abbey and stood before his grandparents, Queen Elizabeth II and
Prince Philip. The newlyweds were celebrated for their romantic love match, and
for the young prince’s determination to marry his soul mate despite her being a
“commoner”—having neither royal nor aristocratic origins. The bride and groom
gave a low curtsy and neck bow to the Queen, who looked sturdy and stoic at
age eighty-five. She signaled her approval with an almost imperceptible nod.
Seventy-two years earlier the Queen had made a similarly independent
decision about love. When she was only thirteen, on the first afternoon she spent
with eighteen-year-old Prince Philip of Greece, a strikingly handsome but
impecunious British naval officer in training, Elizabeth fell in love. Eight years
later they married under the same Gothic arches of Westminster Abbey. While
everything else in the life of Lilibet, as she was called, was laid out for her, she
made the most important decision on her own, against the wishes of her mother,
who preferred a titled English aristocrat. “She never looked at anyone else,” said
Elizabeth’s cousin Margaret Rhodes.
It was a sign of remarkable certitude on the part of then-Princess Elizabeth,
not to mention strength and confidence in a girl so young. But that unwavering
decision is just one of many surprising aspects I discovered about the woman
who has reigned for sixty years as Queen of the United Kingdom of England,
Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, along with fifteen other realms and
fourteen territories around the world. Her role and how she manages to perform
it seemed to me to defy rational explanation: a hereditary position consecrated
by God, embodying a multicultural and multifaith nation far different from the
homogenous land ruled by her predecessors over the thousand-year history of
the British monarchy. I understood that much of her life is ceremonial, an
unvarying routine of yearly set pieces that date from the time of Queen Victoria.